Buying soft drinks? Albertsons has the best deals

Updated 10:58 am, Sunday, April 9, 2017

It’s been an unseasonably warm spring, and a cool drink hits the spot whether you’re getting your garden ready on a sunny day or busy chasing the grandkids around in the backyard.

On Thursday, we checked the prices of popular soft drinks at various stores in Midland. We chose 2-liter bottles and 12-packs of cans of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Sprite, 7Up and Mountain Dew. The stores we visited were H-E-B on Wadley Avenue, Wal-Mart on North Midland Drive, Target, Albertsons Market on North Midland Drive and Big Spring.

If you regularly peruse the grocery store flyers or the soft drink aisle, you already know that soft drinks are constantly on sale. This week, Albertsons frequently had the lowest prices. Out of 12 items, Albertsons had the lowest price on seven of them. Target, on the other hand, frequently had the highest price tags, all of them for 12-packs.

We measured the best deals using the lowest per-unit price, which includes stipulations that you have to buy in bulk.

Fun facts: Coca-Cola was created by pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton in 1886, and while the company has grown to become one of the largest food companies, its namesake beverage is still consumed around the world 130 years later. According to the corporate website, first servings were sold for 5 cents a glass, and sales averaged nine servings per day in Atlanta during the first year. Today, daily servings of Coca-Cola are estimated at 1.9 billion globally.

Fun facts: Pepsi was also started by a pharmacist. Dr. Caleb Bradham invented the beverage in 1893, originally calling it Brad’s Drink. It was renamed Pepsi Cola in 1898. Pepsi became the No. 1 cola in supermarkets for the first time in 1974, according to the company’s website.

Fun facts: Dr Pepper is the oldest major soft drink brand in the United States. It was created by pharmacist Dr. Charles Alderton in 1885 in Waco. It was made in a drugstore owned by Wade Morrison, and legend has it that Morrison named it “Dr. Pepper” after the father of a young girl he was once in love with, according the company’s website.

Fun facts: C.L. Grigg introduced 7Up in October 1929, two months before the stock market crashed. 7Up wasn’t always like the beverage known around the world today. It began life as a caramel-colored beverage. Its original name was Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda, according the company’s website. It also competed with more than 600 lemon-lime soft drinks at the time.

Fun facts: Mountain Dew was invented in 1940 by bottlers and brothers Barney and Ally Hartman of Tennessee. According to a 2016 article by Smithsonian Magazine, Mountain Dew is a reference to mountain-brewed moonshine. The brothers initially began bottling lemon-lime soda pop as a whiskey chaser.